The Last Kingdom

If you’ve ever wondered what is England and why does it keep on happening, this show is not going to answer that question.  Fair enough, this might be something you wonder more and more these days as you cope with the news telling you how old English people insist on voting, but, at best, The Last Kingdom will mostly tell you how the ninth century kingdom of Wessex stood up as a Saxon stronghold against those pesky Vikings.  In short, and, inaccurately, Wessex gradually became England and thus the whole mess we find ourselves in.  Politics aside, regular readers of Just One More Episode (hello to both of you) will remember fondly my September 2017 post extolling the pleasures of Vikings (the TV show, not to be confused with the general concept of Scandinavian marauders).  That programme ended fully in recent times, leaving a Norse-shaped hole in my viewing habits.  Yes, I like zombies, yes, I like things set in high schools, yes, I like prisons, yes, I like reality trash, but I’m recognising here another theme to add to the boxes that any boxset needs to tick for me: Viking-Saxon conflict.

This dichotomy lies at the heart of our hero’s story.  Uhtred is the Saxon son of a Northumbrian Elderman, but he ends up kidnapped into slavery, serving a Viking family.  Through his wiles and charm, he is elevated from property to relation and grows up more Viking than Saxon.  But, as per the pilot episode, Uhtred’s about to find out it’s not so easy being a Saxon who identifies as Viking when Vikings come for your Viking family, with the help of Saxons.  In fact, it’s a fairly stop-start beginning to getting Uhtred where he needs to be, which is down south in the Kingdom of Wessex.  But don’t worry if you’re confused, as every episode begins with Uhtred narrating a recap of his adventures so far.  And fans of proper Viking things will appreciate his persistent Scandinavian accent.

You’ve guessed it, then, that Wessex is the last kingdom in The Last Kingdom to hold out against the Viking onslaught.  The Danes are everywhere grabbing land and laughing at priests.  Contrast their ferocity, then, to the enfeebled citizens of Wessex who are more preoccupied with praying than strategising to defend themselves.  In steps Uhtred, overcoming Alfred’s deep scepticism regarding his loyalties, bringing a laddish touch to business.  And let’s be honest, Uhtred is the cool one.  He has better hair than the Saxons, scoffs at their Christianity and gets to strut around in Viking clobber looking an absolute boss while they scurry about in meagre rags.  Men want to be him (or baptise him) and women want to be with him (despite the track record of his women faring well in the relationship).

I’ll confess to only just breaking into season two of four, having recetnly begun the show at a friend’s recommendation, but it’s the boxset I find myself looking forward to most of an evening.  Not being a savage, I do my best to ration episodes to one per night so that I can bask fully in the glory of Wessex.  Indeed, the geek in me loves how the subtitles announcing each location give us the city names at the time, adding to the overall perception of historical accuracy.  There’s no way of assessing this for real, though, but let’s just say it feels bob on.  My linguist boffin could do with some acknowledgement of the fact the Danes and Saxons all seem to speak the same language, but why let that get in the way of a good story?

But yes, it was the most violent of times, and blood is shed all over the muddy streets of Winchester and beyond.  However, we don’t seem to be allowed to swear.  There’s no effing and jeffing from Uhtred and his merry band and this doesn’t impose a problem until we come to anything sexual.  In place of the beloved F word, we have humping.  Somehow, this registers a bit pervier, but gradually becomes part of The Last Kingdom’s own mythology.  And we do see some quite graphic humping, bringing to mind the late-night Channel 5 films of yore, so I’m wondering if we’re claiming that a naughty word is more offensive that the action it describes.

All in all, though, it’s a yes please to The Last Kingdom.  It may have tempted you in your Netflix menu before now, but ended up rejected in favour of newer, more hyped-up fare, but sign yourself up for all four series if you fancy some wild storytelling peppered with religious fervour, ethnic conflict and a bit of a history lesson thrown in.  At least it can distract you from England today.

Narcos: Mexico

There’s been a lot of debate around this and nobody can seem to agree.  Are we in or are we out?  Is Narcos: Mexico just another series of Narcos, or is it a different show entirely?  I didn’t even know if I was supposed to put a colon in the title between Narcos and Mexico.  However, I seem to be writing a separate one of these posts about it, so this is proof at last that’s not just a fourth series of one programme, but a fully-fledged boxset in its own right.  Sure, both exist in the same universe and both can stand alone, as you don’t need to have seen one to understand the other, but, if I’ve treated Fear The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead as independent entities, then we must be consistent here.

Truth be told I rolled straight into Narcos: Mexico after finishing Narcos – it was a logical progression and the Netflix algorithm was fairly insistent that because I watched Narcos I should watch Narcos: Mexico.  Confidently, I clicked to play was immediately devastated that the Colombian Spanish I had subconsciously learned from Narcos, however, didn’t allow much latent intelligibility with the Spanish on offer in Narcos Mexico (which, in case you can’t tell, is Mexican Spanish).  My linguistic geekiness was devastated and I was subsequently forced to pay much closer attention to the subtitles than I had been intending.  This issue was also compounded by one of the leading cast: Diego Luna.  Stepping into the Escobarian shoes of Wagner Moura as chief antagonist, Luna plays Félix Gallardo, the drugs kingpin whose rise and pursuit forms the main narrative arc of the drama. When I say play, I mean mumbles, as he violates his lines as if his mouth is full of muffin and he’s in a rush to get the words out before taking another massive bite.  Before knickers are got into twists, I should point out my longstanding fandom of Luna; coming across Y Tu Mamá También on DVD back in my student days, I vowed that his performance in this influential film would always see him endowed with my utmost respect.  I confess that Gael García Bernal has more fun in the film, and not just because he has a mullet, but the point I am making here is that everyone should see this film and that Luna is a god for being in it.

But yeah, his drugs czar lacks something.  Whereas Moura got to be all moody stares while seeming to revel in the bloodlust his career in narcotics required of him, Luna is dominated by furrowed, sweaty brows, exasperation at his staff and possessed of a mild imposter syndrome.  I’ll forgive this, though, as it’s a tough part to crack and a tougher act to follow (though the chronology actually precedes Narcos – confused emoji).  What we do have is a cracking set of US narcos hot on his trail, clearly undeterred by his poor diction (including an angrier Ken Cosgrove from Mad Men).  Our introduction to their world is delivered from the perspective of Kiki Camarena, played by the underrated Michael Peña.  Mostly wearing what appears to be one of the awful jackets from Sex Education, Camarena is quickly het up about the Guadalajara unit’s ineffectiveness in the face of the biggest marijuana farming enterprise ever seen.  But Camarena is ever resourceful and he don’t always play by the rules, brought to life thrillingly when he sneaks onto a bus transporting impoverished rural Mexicans to work at the cannabis plantation.  His disguise?  He messes his hair up, proving correct the assumption that poverty is often indicated by bad haircuts.

Providing the kind of hedonism that looks great on screen, we have Rafael Caro Quintero, Gallardo’s childhood friend and the mastermind behind the strain of weed that launches the whole operation.  A constant loose cannon of a threat to his pal’s business aims, he doubles the jeopardy at play in any illegal narcotics operation, not least with his very exciting dalliance with rich girl, Sofía.  These two revel in japes that make their eventual coming a cropper truly inevitable, providing excellent entertainment along the way.

Further complications come from Gallardo’s political entanglements, laying bare the rampant corruption that allows him to function in the first place.  With character traits as sinister as their suits are tacky, these men lurk constantly at his heels to exacerbate his stress at every turn.  Why anyone would choose such a career is beyond me.  You have loads of money, which is nice, but that only lasts until your violent murder, whereas a peaceful retirement must surely be a better, if impossible prospect.  Some of his perplexity was shared by me as a viewer though, as I unavoidably missed some of the subtitles explaining who specifically these chaps were, and ended up having to accept that men in bad suits dogging him at every turn were just par for the course.

I’ll conclude that Netflix is mostly right: if you liked Narcos, you’ll like Narcos: Mexico.  It is simply more of the same.  Heart-stopping drama is punctuated by the same standard tropes: stakeouts in period automobiles, tense cat-and-mouse near misses, cigarettes and moustaches.  The soundtrack is gunfire and Spanish swearwords.  The setting is sweaty dust and dusty sweat, though 1980s Guadalajara fails to excite the traveller in me as much as 1990s Colombia.  I couldn’t help wondering what the big idea was here: are we going to complete an encyclopaedic dramatization of every illegal substance oligarch South America has ever produced?  Either way, until Narcos: Uruguay is available for streaming, you can get your fix of that narco life with this show, but if true stories, class As, murders and Mexican sun are not crucial ingredients in your boxset viewing, then simply viewing Narcos (as in, Narcos: Original) is sufficient.

Westworld

Sometimes you want a TV show to make you ponder the very essence of what it means to be a human.  And sometimes you just want something with plenty of sex and violence.  Maybe these two things aren’t that separate after all, as Westworld manages to deliver both, and all in a cheeky cowboy hat.  Let’s be honest, sex and violence are, after all, key parts of the human experience.  According to Westworld, they are definitely key parts of the cowboy experience too.

Billed, as with all big new shows, as something that would fill the Game Of Thrones hole in our lives, I let the first series of Westworld pass me by.  It was everywhere on my Sky EPG, posters followed me on my commute and trailers constantly rolled on every screen I went near.  It all made me lose interest, especially as nobody in the office seemed to be talking about it.  Could this big-budget western be a major dud?  But then, looking for a new show to start, and giving careful consideration to what should be covered on Just One More Episode, I consulted IMDB’s top rated TV shows: a list of 250 programmes that viewers have rewarded with up to ten stars.  Once I filtered out all the really old stuff and nature documentaries, Westworld (currently at #36) was the highest ranked entity I thought I could bear to watch.

My final barrier to overcome was that Westworld was also the name of a hip hop clothing shop at university and one particular friend used to dress in their attire from head to toe after watching You Got Served.  We all experiment with style when we’re young, but I should emphasise there is no age limit to enjoying a film produced as a streetdance vehicle for B2K.

From the cowboy chat so far, it should be clear that Westworld is a western, of sorts.  Not the kind of western made in the fifties that they repeat on TCM and your dad still watches during the daytime even though it’s sunny outside.  The western world of Westworld is actually a theme park.  Rather than queuing up at Thorpe Park to lose your lunch on a roller coaster though, the visitors to Westworld inhabit a near-future USA where technology has advanced enough to create artificial beings tasked with bringing history to life.  The wealthy book passage to this resurrected era, dressed for the period (a bit like those weird photo booths that actually are a part of normal theme parks), arriving by steam train at a frontier town.  Have they hired impoverished actors to flesh out the illusion?  No; these are, essentially, robots.

Right then, so it’s robots and cowboys – together at last.  Of all the historic periods you could create using animatronics, I’m still not sure I would go for cowboys.  What about all the courtly intrigue of Tudor England, or the licentious lifestyles of the Romans?  That might just be me.  Either way, the cowboy theme allows the paying visitors to shoot guns and whore about (literally) with little concern for the consequences.  Only the hosts can be killed, as they are programmed not to hurt humans.  Their purpose of existence is solely to fulfil their storylines in order to entertain.  But, such is their sophistication as pieces of tech, the ultimate tension comes from the slowly revealed truth that the hardware is starting to get emotional.  Cue a glacially paced and artfully crafted build up through series one to the inevitable pay off of the lunatics taking over the asylum.

With sinister grandpa Anthony Hopkins as the park’s founder and the hosts’ co-inventor, Dr Robert Ford, it’s all a bit Jurassic Park.  But that’s a huge part of the fun.  Let’s just say the future doesn’t look great for theme parks.  However, it does look good for A-list actors, as the cast is a roll call of household names, or at least names where you recognise the faces and can get distracted agonising over trying to remember where you saw them last.  They’re all enjoying themselves immensely, from James Marsden providing the cheekbones and jawline of the handsome cowboy hero, to Thandie Newton having the time of her life running the whorehouse as a tart with not just a heart, but a very complicated backstory.

And that’s the beauty of it.  The hosts play out storylines where they die, but then they are picked up by staff, tidied up, wiped and rebooted and sent out to play again in an endless cycle of suffering.  What if the memories start to come back?  Saying more isn’t possible without reeling off spoilers, so let’s instead focus on some questions that I always ask myself while watching.

Why do they have to be naked when they are getting serviced?

When a host is in for repair, they sit in glass rooms in the nude, while human technicians re-programme them using fancy tablets.  Not only is it unrealistic that the tech hooks up every time (the wifi never disconnects temperamentally) and nobody suggests turning it off and then turning it on again, but you’d think someone could afford the poor hosts something for their modesty.  Instead, their exposure further emphasises their abuse by the humans that run them.  Luckily, Newton’s character Maeve does finally get her own back in the second series, almost recognising the show’s surplus of wrinkly willies with one more wrinkly willy.

What’s up with the way the hosts die?

They’re robots, but they seem to have circulatory systems.  When shot with guns, blood spurts forth.  It’s not enough that they mimic humans in every way, they have this further facet of realism to provide.  Is the hardware designed so that injuries are categorised into fatal and non-fatal so the tech knows exactly when to shut down in order to maintain the storyline?  It’s kind of philosophical really.  Nevertheless, they’re back in the park the next day to do it all again.  They also never run out of battery, whereas my iPhone needs two charges a day just to keep up with Whatsapp.

Where is this place?

For the concept to be believed, we need to accept that somewhere there is a massive expanse of land that can be given over to leisure.  Our view of the outside world is, at first, limited, so we are as blinkered as the hosts to life beyond Westworld.  By the second season, characters suddenly start referring to an island, which curiously has never come up before, so I am wondering if they are now writing themselves out of a hole.

All of these niggles are just part and parcel of creating something so ambitious.  The scope of the show is as enormous as the park needs to be.  The first series takes it time letting you into Westworld and then works through twists that shatter your understanding.  Don’t get impatient, as repetition is used to show the farcical nature of the hosts’ lives.  I do admit that I have fallen asleep in almost every single episode, but don’t let that put you off.  It’s something that I have been watching late at night when I invariably start to reason that I can watch the last part with my eyes closed and then wake up to find it’s all over.  I’ve therefore had to re-watch some sequences a few times.  It’s better when you’re awake, or you won’t understand what’s going on.  The one time I didn’t fall asleep, I was ironing shirts at the same time as watching, so that kept me up luckily.

The complete first series is available on Sky Boxsets, while the second season is in the middle of premiering as I type.  This means I have gone from being able to hit up an episode each evening of series one to having to wait for my weekly instalment like some historical artefact.  Maybe this is how cowboys had to view boxsets before on-demand platforms existed.  I hope I remember what’s going on, but this enforced rationing should ensure more time to contemplate Westworld’s inner philosophical debate.  After all, what does define human consciousness?  I shall give it a good think while my eyes are glued mindlessly to the screen, trying to stay awake, watching naked people shoot each other on the telly.